Present Day...

I breathe against the ice and watch it fog up over and over again, until my breath is too cold to do anything. Then what little heat I have in my fingertips to melt little pictures into the thin ice wall. Eventually that too ends, when my hands are just as freezing as everything else around me. I sit cross legged at the bottom of the glass-like box I made for myself, watching the water move around me.

I rub my hands together and then blow on them, smiling as the snowflakes fly out in front of me. Beautiful.

I do this a lot, but once the lake naturally freezes over, that'll be the end of it. When I need peace and quiet I craft myself a box of ice, just thick enough to see through clearly, and let myself sink into the water. Sometimes I see little creatures swimming around, ignoring me like I'm one of their own and not something to fear. It's so peaceful, so cold.

Cold... Jack teases me saying that that's what I'm becoming. That my ability has taken over my very being. Sometimes I believe him, sometimes I don't. I think about that a lot while I'm down here. Maybe Nate's death and everything in the months since has turned me cold. I wonder. I also wonder if I was able to die, would I have? If Nate hadn't tried to save me...

I wish he hadn't.

I hear a loud noise, and then water rushes in all around me. Looking up wide eyed I see Jason, Nate's best friend, holding his breath and swimming beside me. The water fills my lungs and I cough, which only lets more water in to painfully fill my lungs. That's one major flaw to the infinity serum that Nate injected me with; I may not be able to die without the 'cure', but I sure can feel pain.

I swim to the top and start coughing up water. Jason appears beside me looking guilty.

"I told you not to bug me while I'm thinking." I glare at him.

"I know," he says with a nod, "but this is important."

"The world is ending, Jasey. Everything and nothing is important."

"The world isn't ending as long as we're alive. And for you, that's always going to be the case." We swim back towards shore.

"I told you—" I start to talk.

"Yeah, I know. Don't talk about it or him. I get it." He sounds annoyed.

"Do you?" I sit down on the ground beside the water.

"He was my best friend, Aria." Jason tries to reach for my arm, but I move just out of reach.

"Let's go. It's important, right?" I stand up and start walking towards the house, a tiny, hundred year old thing that doesn't have enough bedrooms for how many of us there are living in it.

I hear him sigh behind me and feel a twinge of guilt. I don't mean to act like this; so impatient and snappy...  It just comes out. I don't turn around or apologize though. He knows.

The walk back doesn't take very long, but it is long enough to make me wish I was like Nate is —or rather, was— and could run the distance in a fraction of a second. I smile when I remember the first time he showed me his ability. He was so smug after seeing my confused face. So happy and... alive.

Jack, our metal-man and liespotter, meets me at the door. "What did you say to Jason?" He asks, tilting his head.

"What makes you think—"

"He's moping," Jack interrupts.

"He mopes anyways, doesn't mean I did anything." I point out.

"Not as much as you do," he says before Jason walks up.

"Hey, bud." Jason nods and steps inside with us. We walk silently to the tiny living room which has two raggedy couches and a small television with a crack on the top righthand corner that causes that part of the screen to have strange colours. We're met by several pairs of eyes.

"What is this, a family meeting?" I muse.

"Sort of..." Zayla, the newest member of our little... whatever you would call it, says. I didn't trust the quiet girl at first, especially since one of her two abilities is to be able to hide from liespotters like Jack. Which she had done. She's starting to grow on me now though.

I stare at them all one at a time and then lean against the wall with a sigh. "So what's wrong?"

"Turn on the TV," my cousin, Jen whispers.

"It barely even works," I say with a shrug as I walk over to it, "but alright, if you say so." I click the power button and the screen lights up, showing the national news channel. The woman sits at the typical newsroom desk with a screen behind her showing the subject she's talking about. As always, that subject on the screen is all about the rebellions, about cities falling, and about obedience to the authorities and why it's necessary.

"This isn't anything new," I comment. "The world has been ending for a long time, we all know that. Just like we all know they blame us."

"Keep watching," Zayla sighs. "There's something new."

I start paying attention to the newscaster's voice again. "Now the time has come for us to take some desperate measures. We cannot live like this anymore. Even with the securities, rules, and restrictions we have set into place, it is not enough. The only solution to this problem is to eliminate the problem."

My mouth begins to feel dry. "Is she saying what I think she's saying?"

"Keep watching." Jason puts a hand on my shoulder; this time I don't move away. Well at least I know for sure that he isn't mad at me.

"Our Chosen, the teenagers who we treated so lovingly—"

I snort.

"—Are the ones who started this rebellion. Feeding people lies and terrible, terrible thoughts. Our only option now is to rid ourselves of them, although we do so with a heavy heart." She hangs her head as if the words actually hurt her. What an act.

"This is insane. What are they going to do, kill us? Everyone here in this house is already being searched for." I shift my weight to one hip and stand with my arms crossed over my chest.

The woman on the screen continues to speak. "This is an official arrest warrant for all four hundred Chosen. We cannot take the risk of any being free, guilty of the heinous crimes that we spoke of earlier or not. We warn you all to be careful in engaging such ones, as you never know whom of them received abilities or not. The consequences of being among this group is either life in prison, or death."

My vision blurs, and it takes me a moment to understand why. Cold, cold tears are running down my face, and suddenly I desperately miss the feeling of being warm. A feeling that I haven't experienced in so, so long.

As the tears fall I realize that I, the girl who cannot die, am desperately afraid of death. Not for myself, but for everyone else around me.

"Excuse me." I stand up and walk briskly from the room.

"Aria!"

********

I pace back and forth across the snowy front lawn of the house, trying desperately to think of a way to fix things. I laugh quietly and bitterly after thinking for too long. I'm almost seventeen years old. I should be in highschool, I should be with my family. I should be worrying about petty little things like boys, homework, and what shoes to wear with my outfit. I should not be debating giving up my life or trying to save my little piece of the world.

Jason steps outside and stares at me.

"We can't just go into hiding," I blurt out.

"No, no we can't," he replies slowly and calmly. "What can we do?"

"We can't turn ourselves in." I ring my hands together.

"I sai—"

"We can fix it. We can fix everything." I look up at him. "Like all those books and movies where everything goes wrong and just a few little people against the word fix it all."

"Aria, this isn't a book..." Jason sighs.

"I know that, Jasey, but what's the alternative? We all disappear and everything goes back to normal for a while until another fifty years past they get the chance to—" I can't even finish my sentence. He knows what they were planning to do with the Chosen anyway.

"You're right," he whispers after a long pause.

Then an ear piercing scream comes from inside the house that scares me half to death. You can tell how much it scares Jason by the flames that shoot out around him as he whips around to face the noise. Together we run into the house and back to the tiny living room. Jen is screaming hysterically at the old TV, now on the floor after having assumably fallen off the stand.

"Whoa. whoa," I say, walking over and putting my hands on her shoulders.

"He's there, I saw him, Aria! They said his name!" She hits the power button on the old thing a million times as Jack and Jason lift it back onto the stand.

I stare at her in confusion for a moment then let my eyes wander to the side of the wall with the electrical outlet. The TV cord must have been ripped from the wall when it fell over, because the plug is laying on the floor right underneath it.

I nod over to the cord and Anna picks it up quickly. As soon as she plugs it in, the TV blinks back to life. The news station is still on, and the woman is talking about the Chosen who have already turned themselves in, and what a better place they're in than the ones who were simply found and arrested.

"And who don't we talk to some of those unwilling Chosen?" She suggests. "Perhaps it with help you Chosen still remaining out there..." She stares directly and creepily into the camera. "To realize what choice you need to make."

"They're probably being tortured to say what they're 'supposed' to say," I comment, making Jen's eyes widen more.

"Aria, I don't think you want—"

A different newscaster's voice interrupts Jen. This one is a man, and he's in a crowd of people, mostly police officers. "How about we start with this young man. You don't look to be in the best shape."

The camera cuts to a dirty blonde haired boy with a dirty, badly bruised, swollen face. He looks so familiar, but with all the cuts on his face I doubt I'd recognize him if I was his own mother.

I don't realize who he is until he begins to speak. "No kidding."

My throat tightens, my head spins, vision blurs. I feel like I'm dying; and this time, for just a second, I don't wish I was.

"Do you wish you had simply willingly gave yourself up to the authorities?" The newscasters asks. His voice sounds so far away, like it's not even real.

"And save myself from being tortured? No. I would rather die than let them get what they want," Nate, my Nate says fiercely.

An inhuman noise escapes my throat as I reach for something to help me stand up. I claw at Zayla's little, pale arm and she struggles to help me. Without meaning to I cover her whole arm in a layer of ice. She moves away quickly, and I fall.

Just before I faint, he says one last thing, straight into the camera. "Fight, Aria."

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